Today Adam of An und fur Sich wrote a post on the perils of blogging, discussing some of the nastiness that has characterized SR/OOO discussions on the internet. While I am an adamant defender of blogging, I do think he raises a number of valid points. First my views about the good of blogging. I started this blog on a lark back in 2006. I had read about blogs in an airplane magazine, and had no idea what they were. When I returned from my trip– over a Spring break — I searched to see if there were any blogs about Lacan or Deleuze. I found them and was immediately hooked. Late one night I created the blog “Larval Subjects”, and wrote my first post on the relationship between Deleuze and Lacan. The blog became one of my most fulfilling modes of intellectual engagement. Perhaps that’s pathetic, but I don’t care.
Why did I start the blog? I started basically because I was in a place of loneliness and despair. While I have good intellectual friends here in Texas, there isn’t much of what you would call an intellectual community here. Not that I’ve found, anyway. Moreover, I was exhausted by academia and publishing and presenting to advance my career. Originally Larval Subjects was anonymous. I went by “Sinthome”. Blogging was a way in which I could form community with other thinkers in a space that explored the sheer joy of ideas. The “larval” of “Larval Subjects” indicated that these ideas were half formed, simply thrown out there. It was a space where I could just think and explore ideas for the sake of thinking and exploring ideas. It was a space free of academic apparatus. Here I could write simply for the sake of writing and thinking without perpetually thinking about publishing and presenting. At a time where I felt as if I had failed academically because I was only a lowly community college professor and had not achieved a tenure track position, this was a way of overcoming my despair and simply taking delight in thinking and discussing.
read on!
And it has been great. Larval Subjects has been a sort of public journal like Merleau-Ponty’s Visible and the Invisible or Nietzsche’s Will to Power, where I’ve been able to be honest about what I think at any given moment and where I’ve been able to explore ideas without all the academic apparatus and strategizing for acceptance in various journals. I’ve been able to love thinking again as a result. Through blogging I’ve found community. I have interlocutors that I would have never encountered. Rings of discussion spread throughout the blogosphere like pebbles thrown in a pond. As a result of these encounters, I’ve followed vectors of thought that I would have never followed before. I’ve been able to develop sequences of criticism in this medium that would not have been possible otherwise. This encounter with criticism has enabled me to refine arguments and concepts in ways that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And finally the blogosphere has exposed me to theoretical orientations that I would have never encountered on my own. It’s likely that I would have never encountered SR and OOO without encountering thinkers like Nick Srnicek and Nicole Pepperell.
But there is a dark side to the internet, as Adam suggests. The last twelve months have been particularly trying for me. I have had my stalkers and trolls, but also far more terrifying denizens of the web. I have had people try to blackmail me, threatening my job, using things they read on twitter that had nothing to do with me, demanding that I no longer talk about certain philosophical concepts and ideas. This was a person who had already harassed me for years for reasons that I find baffling.
When Eileen Joy and I founded O-Zone we were harassed with countless emails from a person of the Peircian bent who felt entitled to a position on the editorial board of the journal. This person felt that they were entitled to a position on the editorial board, that there position on the editorial board had been stolen by another person (nevermind that we can have as many editors as we’d like), and sent us dozens of extremely acrimonious and angry emails suggesting that somehow we were trying to undermine their chances at tenure. Somehow they never seemed to register that we had no idea who they were, that they had only commented on this blog a couple times and in ugly ways at that, and that they hadn’t participated in any of the SR/OOO conference, nor had they ever contributed anything to the new materialisms. No, in this person’s mind they somehow deserved to be on that board. They contended that they were the victim of religious persecution, despite the fact that I’ve supported the work of SR/OOO theologians and even reviewed and written prefaces for their works. A couple months ago I received a letter from a “lawyer” threatening a harassment lawsuit from this person, despite the fact that we’d never initiated communication with him on our own and that he’d sent all these harassing emails! This was a tenure track professor!
The other fun thing that happened in the last twelve months was a person who completely lied about their identity. They created a persona and set of credentials that turned out to be completely fabricated, all the way down to their name. When we found out who they really were, it turned out that they’d had charges of sexual harassment, stalking, and fraud on their record, and that they had nothing near the credentials they’d suggested. Dealing with that person was a pretty miserable and heartbreaking experience.
There’s not a day in which I don’t consider shutting down this blog and withdrawing from all online participation. I dread opening my email. I dread opening the comments on this blog. Sometimes I go days without looking at either. I’m shell shocked. These three examples are only one of many. You don’t see the emails I delete, nor the emails I receive. At this point I seldom even respond to emails unless I can actually trace the person who sent it. So what’s my point? My point is that when you talk about the nastiness of the blogosphere you might be ignorant of the context. There was a reason Harman closed his comments. There’s a reason people don’t respond. There are things you don’t see; serious things like threats of blackmail and threatening letters sent by lawyers. Have many of us acted like jack asses and ridiculously in response to these things? Yes! Was there a context that fostered those reactions! Yes! At this point I’m about done with all this. I get beaten, but get told I’m the one with the bad tone. You only ever see the surface of the iceberg.
Larval Subjects . 
December 4, 2012 at 2:41 am
Well, I think you provide a model of the possibilities for doing philosophy inherent in this medium. I don’t know if you remember a Deleuze email discussion list through Yahoo you participated in: I interacted with you way back then (when I was an undergrad, and when you had that old website – levibryant.com I think it was). I was seeking out high quality discussions of philosophy online, and didn’t find any until I came across that list.
In that way, I discovered that email is a very good medium for me to talk about philosophy. And the discovery has continued to prove fruitful. I had some painful times of intellectual paralysis in grad school – facing the yawning emptiness of the blank page and believing I had to fill it with the most profound thoughts imaginable. Over email, though, it didn’t seem to matter whether what I wrote was all that good I could let loose, and as a result I’d frequently write emails that came out to twenty pages single spaced, full of ideas. When my adviser discovered this and really like the emails I’d write to him as he and I began corresponding furiously, he encouraged me just to write my dissertation through correspondence. Now, more than a decade later, I have recently filed a dissertation all of which was written, in first draft form, through dozens of long email conversations with him and others.
I’ve done blogging only intermittently, but to me it seems to have many of the advantages of email: you get more time to think through your response than in off-the-cuff conversation in person, yet you don’t have the pressures of very formal writing that come along with publication in journals and books. And of course, blogging has many advantages that email discussion lists never had – the ease of tracking threaded discussions separately being the one that stands out for me.
December 4, 2012 at 2:46 am
I can understand why you would want to shut it down, but I would certainly miss Larval Subjects if you did. It’s not just a blog. It’s the genius loci of a movement.
December 4, 2012 at 3:51 am
I’m really sorry you’ve had to put up with this kind of thing. Like the saying goes: nothing surprises me anymore, but I never cease to be alarmed! We get taken in by the smooth appearance of everyday life–the face people put on, but we know what happens when the doors are locked and the lights go out–the violence, misogyny… the whole frightful list. It’s a violent, terribly disordered world we’ve made for ourselves, and when you take the protective fences & down and open the gates, they come howling in from the ruins.
. I’m so glad you stuck you neck out and gave this a try. Larval Subjects has been wonderfully stimulating for me, because it’s NOT principally philosophy, or any one field, but welcomes the violation of borders, stimulating fertile interaction in every area it’s entered.
Is it safe to be so open, so public? Probably not. Not in our sick universally alienating world of zombie capitalism. What’s the choice? To hang in there and nurse the wounds, find solidarity with those who care… or what? Go back to what you were describing when you decided to try this blog thing? I suppose that you have many more connections than you did then and don’t need it in the same way–but Larval Subjects would be missed by many if you folded it up. I know I would..
Solidarity/Resistance/Imagination!
–Jacob
December 4, 2012 at 4:33 am
Levi, you have exposed the deepest parts of what you are: the integrity of your being. To open one’s self is to accept the darkness of the world. To live beyond that darkness is to live the fierceness of that integrity completely. Do not let the insanity of the world destroy your integrity. Trust in that solitude, the loneliness that you have spoken of for so long. Turn that loneliness into your friend, discover the duende hiding in that loneliness and give if thought, music, the poetry of mind. Petrarch, of whom I, of late, have been perusing suggested that at most we would attain three friendships in life. Those are our lovers and the keepers of our most intimate intimacies. All others are part of the burden of being. To lighten that burden is the object of philosophy and poetry alike.
December 4, 2012 at 4:56 am
Levi, it breaks my heart to hear you’ve had a such hard time of things. For whatever it’s worth, I’ve found your blog stimulating, engaging, motivating, and thought provoking. As someone who comes from another discipline I find the openness and omnivorous nature of your approach to philosophy as expressed through your writing here profoundly welcoming, so the idea of people being so terrible to you because of or through this blog itself is especially infuriating. I hope you find it possible to continue and that you know that, though we may usually be more quiet than these sociopaths you’ve had to deal with, there are those of us out here who deeply value what you do here.
December 4, 2012 at 6:14 am
I’m so sorry that you’ve had to deal with such hostility. As a very distant ripple in the pond (an art historian at a small midwestern liberal arts college), I nonetheless want to register my gratitude for your blog, its beauty and lucidity, and the continuous flow of ideas you share so generously. Thank you.
December 4, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Levi, I am a post-grad philosophy student in Greece and, if things go well, I will provide my thesis on the concepts of virtual/actual in Deleuze next year. I ‘ve discovered this blog few months ago after a suggestion of a friend and blogger with similar interests. I had no idea how many things were to be found here. I think I speak in behalf of many readers when I say that what you are doing is inspirational for a lot of anonymous and silent friends across the globe. More than that, it’ s extremely interesting. Have this in mind when dark thoughts come up.
December 4, 2012 at 3:39 pm
and then, theres a dark side
December 4, 2012 at 3:46 pm
I do think the internet may exacerbate some issues by making communication more frequent and cheaper (without it, some people might just never have found you at all, for good or ill). But I wonder if some of the problems aren’t just preexisting problems moved onto the internet. The example of harassment over appointment to an editorial board reminds me of some tales I have heard which didn’t involve the internet at all: they involved harassing phone calls, including in one case calls to someone’s department chair intended to try to damage their career. And nasty academic politics of the hallway-slander variety long predates the internet as well.
December 4, 2012 at 4:05 pm
Thank you for this post, Levi. It’s one of your best. Maybe the best ever; time will tell. I think it marks a beginning of a possibility that didn’t exist before you shared what’s REALLY BEEN GOING DOWN. A chance for community and eudaimonia which cannot be built on top of treachery and anxiety and withholding, but perhaps can be fostered with this kind of generous clearing of the air. Your entrusting us with what was withdrawn from our perception could just be the difference that makes the difference.
I’m going to say it out loud, even as I know you already know it: these hateful experiences are going to enrich, probably already have, the new work on onto-cartography. The life force in you will…I don’t know…compress the lump of coal and render it into a thousand-carat multi-faceted diamond to outshine the illuminated manuscript with which you illustrated this post. Perhaps you already see that potential, that will a little help from your friends, so to speak, there can be a there there.
In my powerful mind I am holding you and Larval Subjects in a bright white healing light, as we all give up the ghost of unreality together.
Here’s a sexy sweet song to refresh our spirits. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wycjnCCgUes
December 4, 2012 at 6:35 pm
See above
My students finsished yeaterday and they were still talking about the exchange over Skype. Please enjoy your symptom.
From Melbourne
December 4, 2012 at 7:49 pm
I am quite isolated from academia (which I don’t really mind) and find this blog a valuable place to drop into – a virtual cafe. I would miss it even tho levi is a pain in the neck:)
The great value of the internet is that we are no longer geographically isolated…
December 4, 2012 at 11:24 pm
From a long time lurker over in Australia, I just wanna say I love reading your blog and it’s always great to hop online and find a new post waiting :) Please don’t let idiots get to you!
Cheers!
December 6, 2012 at 12:45 pm
[…] expected, Adam’s post generated several interesting blog-reactions [here, here, here, here and here] though, while he was not quite saying anything new, and while […]